Gay for Play: A Video Game Podcast

A whirlwind of a couple weeks, to say the least! The Nintendo Switch 2 is finally out, the 2025 Tony Awards were a slay, brand new video games have been announced at Summer Game Fest, and all in all things feel...bad! 

Listener, it always feels weird to talk about video games and culture when things feel so dire and bad in the world. We recorded this episode amidst the ICE-protests in Los Angeles, and as the fight against the authoritarianism and fascism of this administration continues, it feels very bread-and-circus-y to talk about trivial things like video games d...

Theatre is on the brain this week here on this video game podcast that is rapidly becoming more and more of a theatre-podcast by each episode (listen... Gay for PLAY is a double entendre; walk with me...) 

Our main topic this week the stunning pro-shot of the West End production of Next to Normal: the 2009 Pulitzer-prize winning musical about a woman's mental health and its impact on her and her complicated family. It's a show we forgot how much we loved and we're thrilled to have this new version to chew over and analyze. Before that, we a...

It doesn't take much to get us to talk about Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, but what a joy to have a legit reason to do so! Laurence recently saw Gaga's "Mayhem in the Desert" at Coachella, and Eric is fresh off of seeing night 1 of Bey's "Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit". We've gathered here, in a conclave of two, to discuss both! (Our own personal "Telephone Part 2", if you will). 

On top of that, we have a stellar video game to discuss this week! We share our first thoughts on BLUE PRINCE, a puzzle adventure ga...

This past week, Nintendo lifted the veil and gave us our first in-depth look at their new console, the Nintendo Switch 2, beckoning the two of us back to the airwaves to ask the question: "Will I spend 450+ USD on this?" The answer? Well... we'll see. At this point it's unclear when we'll even be able to consider preordering one! (Girl, the tariffs...) 

For now though, a Nintendo Direct about what the Switch 2 will have to offer in its launch days has us with plenty of exciting things to talk about! Open world Mario Kart! Kirby Air RIDERS💜! A se...

The Nintendo Switch 2 got announced yesterday. However, we recorded this episode a day *before* that announcement. So instead we, as gay people, talked about a bad movie we are obsessed with. (Which is honestly the best thing one can do for themselves sometimes in times of crisis! It's been a rough week for us amidst the LA wildfires, the impending incoming presidential administration, etc.)

The bad movie in question being Emilia Pérez, the controversial musical melodrama that beat out Wicked at the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. It's a movie that i...

For our last episode of 2024, we share our thoughts on The Game Awards and then have a good ol' fashioned GOTY chat on our favorite games of 2024!

Listen... if we're being real, we honestly didn't play *too* many games released this calendar year, but the ones we did play were bangers nevertheless! Including an undisputed choice for our joint Game of the Year. Join us as we give the girls their flowers and talk about what vibed with us the most.

Thanks for sticking with us through another year of G4P! We'll be back...

Laurence and Eric work in tandem as they are joined this week by their partners, Hector Barajas (first time guest!) and Gerry Tonella (returning from our Olympics episode) to hold space for the musical/cultural blockbuster event of the year –  WICKED (part one). Full spoilers ahead for the movie, the stage musical, the book kinda, the source material (The 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) and the source material’s source material (another book) as we discuss all things swankified in the Oz, Shiz, and beyond. We *are* in queer media so, naturally we have an Emerald City’s worth of thoug...

This week, on what is approximately our 4th(!) anniversary of the pod (we launched on Thanksgiving Day 2020), we gather to discuss the future of the pod, games we’ve been playing, the Game Awards nominations, theatre we’ve been holding space for, and ruminate on some of our favorite albums of the year as the year rapidly draws to a close!

Games discussed: Pokémon TCG Pocket, Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Mario Party Jamboree, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Metaphor Re:Fantazio
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Bonsoir! Bienvenue à PARIS!
This week we set aside video games in favor of OLYMPIC games, as we are joined by the lovely Gerry Tonella (Olympic gold medalist in the sport of "being Eric's cutie-patootie boyfriend") to discuss the games of the 33rd Summer Olympiad in Paris, France! Collectively we found it to be our favorite Olympic games of recent memory, with soooo much to discuss! From Gaga and Celine to the extinguishing of torch, we dive into a little bit of it all in this episode! 

We start with breaking down the breathtaking opening ceremony that to...

Are we still a video game podcast? Well, sorta kinda! That, pop culture, and beyond as we say, (with an emphasis on the latter two lately...) But still, it's a question we find we are asking ourselves lately! tbh, We find it a little difficult to care as deeply about video games when we are so busy living through major current events and existing in the context of all in which we live (& what came before us, as you will see in this time capsule of an episode)... alas in this episode we endeavor to anyway!
 
This w...

We've been Nasty girls for sitting on this episode for a couple weeks, but we are back! This week we discuss Luca Guadagnino's bisexual fever dream smash hit CHALLENGERS, as well as Another Crab's Treasure - a cute undersea Souls-like where you play as a hermit crab trying to get his shell back, the Met Gala (which we kinda dgaf about but discuss a bit anyway), the recent layoffs in the video game industry, Spy x Family: Code White, some theatre we've been digging into lately, the pop girlies' summer hits ("Nasty" by Tinashe & "Espresso" by Sabina Carpenter to...

Get in the robot, listener, it's time for another Gay for Play! This week we're joined by bestie of the pod and G4P alum, Sara Brown! We get deep and philosophical about the re-release (and first North American release) of The End of Evangelion in theaters and discuss why this film and its anime is still one of the most beloved and mind-boggling series ever made, as well as a show and film rich with queer under(and over)tones. We also get into the new Stardew Valley 1.6 update, chat all about the new features that continue being...

It's all aces this week as Eric and Laurence chitchat about all the culture and games they've been playing this month. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2020's FF7 Remake. Rebirth reunites us with our favorite PTSD-addled twink Cloud Strife, as he and his gang of gay friends and divas leave the city of Midgar and embark on an open world adventure on their hunt for Sephiroth: fighting monsters, going on endless side-adventures, and playing countless minigames along the way (including a truly fantastic card game called Queen's Blood)
And speaking of cards, we've both...

Time marches ever onward, and here we are, with our first episode of 2024!
Back in January (sorry for the delay, it's been a busy start to the year for us) we sat down with one of our OG G4P guests and dear dear friend Leo Grierson to discuss digital theatre and storytelling, A.I. and our complex and evolving opinions on the technology, the joys of grad school, the best farming sims to enjoy whilst recovering from top surgery, and so many more games and movies we've been into lately

Games discussed include Story of...

"The GOTYs, said to portend... untold slayage, and the end of the *year*~"

2023 is over! And we find ourselves at the end of a truly landmark year for gaming.
On this episode we discuss some of our favorite games of 2023. We each pick 5 games from our personal lists that we want to highlight, then culminate the show with 3 "joint slays": games that made both of our lists that we want to celebrate together, the last of which we are considering to be our official pick for 2023 Game of the Year.
Join us as we celebrate...

We back y'all. This week Eric and Laurence hop back on the mics after a much needed break & discuss gaming ruts, our teacher-eras, the end of the actor's strike, AI, some light predictions for the Game Awards (we recorded this episode 2 days before the ceremony) and of course, gaaaaaames!

Games discussed include: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (a slay), Alan Wake (the first one), Super Mario Wonder (wowie-zowie!), Overwatch 2 (fun and for the gays), Baldur's Gate 3 (which recently added ball-jiggle physics), Sea of Stars (also a slay!), and more.

Later in the show we catch up on...

Autumn has officially begun, and with it, massive Role-Playing Games have arisen as some of hottest games of the season. We're leaning into this genre trend this week and discussing 4 games we've been playing!
-First we have the stellar new RPG Baldur's Gate 3, a colossal Dungeons & Dragons-based adventure where dialog choices & character interactions massively impact the story (and also all your party members are super gay and horny for you),
- A stellar new flop in Starfield from Bethesda, a space exploration RPG from the creators of Skyrim and Fallout that unfortunately feels...

It's Virgo('s Groove) Season and we have been blessed by the queen! Beyoncé Knowles (female pop vocalist) Carter brought her record-breaking, epic, indelible Renaissance World Tour to Los Angeles, California earlier this month, and we were there to witness it! (well, 2/3rds of us were, but Eric has watched multiple YouTube recordings of the tour, so he was with us in spirit).

Our friend Eriel Brown joins us to talk about why Beyoncé is, without question, our greatest living performer. We talk the Renaissance album, her birthday show, the tour as a whole and its myriad cu...

You and your party stumble across a new episode of G4P! Go ahead and roll for initiative~

Baldur's Gate 3 is currently the hottest new RPG in the gaming world right now. Only problem is, none of us have played it yet! So on this week's episode we're joined by Steven Christie, our oomfie from down under* (*Australia, not the Underdark) to discuss the game that inspired BG3 and countless other role playing games: DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS!

D&D, the massively popular fantasy tabletop game, has become a household name in the years since its...

This week, Eric and Laurence discuss the 1997 Studio Ghibli Classic, Princess Mononoke and discuss how it had so much more of an impact on the latest Zelda games than we had previously been aware of. We also get into some of our other favorite films from the beloved animation studio, Laurence converts Eric to a NewJeans stan, Eric extols the virtues of garlic confit, and so much more on this episode of Gay for Play!

A note on audio: we lost the original recording of this episode and ended up using a backup of our recorded Discord...

This week we are joined by our friend Matthew Pezzulich (he/him) to discuss PIKMIN 4: the latest entry in the beloved Nintendo franchise about little guys doing silly little tasks at the end of the world (and in that sense, aren't we all Pikmin when you think about it?) We talk about the history of franchise, its themes of environmentalism, collaboration, and the strength of collective labor, and how Pikmin 4's design choices and quality of life improvements make this game the most successful and most accessible game in the series to date.

Matthew also shares his...

This super special episode is a recording of our live show from this past June with SUPER DATING SIMULATOR @ the Alamo Drafthouse's Video Vortex in Downtown LA!!! It was such a blast to be a part of, and now that Hot Labor Summer (the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes) has led us to shift our release schedule around, we're so glad to finally share this episode with you, dear listener!

At Super Dating Simulator's "Tiers of the Kingdom" show, we teamed up with Sara Brown and Sam Weller to make tier-lists to definitively rank different video game & anime...

This week it's back to business after the incredible joy and success our first ever live show in LA last weekend! Eric and Laurence debrief on our show with Super Dating Simulator and the weekend at large before diving into our main topic: JUNE VIDEO GAME ANNOUNCEMENTS!

E3 may be officially dead and gone, but the games are here to stay. We cover our favorite announcements from the June Nintendo Direct, Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest, the Xbox showcase, Wholesome Direct, and more. The sheer number of game announcements can be overwhelming, so we're here to tell...

It's Pride month once again, and what better way to kick off the celebrations than by diving paraglider-first into a hearty discussion on one of the biggest and best games of the year. It's Zelda time!!!

Our favorite androgynous femmeboy girltwink swordsman is back and this time? He has a sexy goat-man's arm grafted onto him.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been one of our most anticipated games ever since it was first announced, and now that we finally have our hands on it we can safely say it did NOT...

Hi divas! (May we call you divas?) It’s an exciting week here at Gay For Play. We recorded this episode mere days before the release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, an event bound to dominate gaming culture for the foreseeable future.  Plus we're joined by iconic oomfie and CenCal legend Bijou Bentley to help us catch up on as much culture as possible before Zelda consumes our lives!

Bijou is an incredibly talented drag artist and visual artist based in the California Central Valley. She joins us to discuss Drag-Con, our final predictions and...

(*Well, Catholic-coded at least...)

An episode a long time in the making in a galaxy right, right here: this week, we're finally discussing STAR WARS! Our friend Jake Carlin joins us to talk all about the supermassive media franchise born from a humble little space-fantasy flick in 1977, which still manages to capture our hearts and imaginations to this day. (thanks in part to some pretty great video games!)

We discuss the 2019 video game STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order, some early impressions of its newly released sequel, STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor. We...

Mushroom Kingdom, heeere we come!

Today we're joined by a bestie of the pod, our theme song composer Connor Marsh, to discuss the long-awaited Super Mario Bros. Movie!
 
And speaking of long-awaited Nintendo things: mere hours before we recorded this episode, the final pre-release trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropped, so we get into that first! We were arguably more excited for that than the Mario movie which was, in our collective opinion, fine! A perfectly passable and fun kid's film chock full of easter eggs for longtime Mario fans t...

"Joel is sooo babygirl-coded."

This week we're joined by our friend Becca Rowland, who first guested on our original The Last of Us episode, to discuss the stellar HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog's beloved 2013 video game. We knew that we would probably want to discuss this season of television, compare it to our thoughts the game, and talk about how much we are head-over-heels, madly, deeply in love with Pedro Pascal & would trade the world for a journey with him across a post-apocalyptic America, but it wasn't until after episode 3 broke our hearts into tiny little pieces...

We're gathered here today to mourn & celebrate the life of a video game console, Nintendo's last handheld-only device, the small but mighty Nintendo 3DS.

As of March 27th, 2023, the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS and Wii U will be officially shut down, meaning 866 Wii U games and 1547 3DS games will no longer be available to purchase. We've already dedicated an episode in the past to the Nintendo Wii U, so today we're taking a look back at our memories of the 3DS: our favorite games to grace the device, StreetPass & other quirky apps, its hit-&-miss use...

It's Awards Season, and you know what that means: it's time for us to once again honor the best and the gayest in gaming, pop culture, and beyond with the second annual VGPCBAs!

Spanning 27 prestigious categories, Eric and Laurence present the awards and dish out legendary trophies for the best (and worst) people, games, and culture that the last year had to offer. Plus this year, extra special guest presenters join us to hand out some of the most coveted awards!

It is truly THE most prestigious awards show of the season, we can't think...

We are back! After a quick hiatus, Eric & Laurence are back to chat all about their trip to Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood, which they visited back in January 2023 during its technical previews. Now, while this ep. may have been recorded a few weeks back, our takes are still hot n' fresh like a plate of Spicy Spaghetti from Toadstool Café! What did we think of the land's signature attraction, Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge? Is a visit to Bowser's Jr.'s Lair worth the $40 power-band upcharge? What about the rest of the interactive elements scattered throughout the l...

~She's bulletproof, nothing to lose... Fire away, fire away~
On this week's episode we discuss the film M3GAN! Returning guest Sara Brown (from our Persona 5 and Catherine: Full Body episodes) joins us to talk about the little murderous doll who has captivated audiences nationwide and immediately become a new gay horror icon.

We talk about how she joins a lineage of haunted little dolls while also subverting the trope with a modern twist about our over-reliance on technology in child-care. Plus we ruminate on why she resonates so much with queer audiences. Is it because...

There's a mystery afoot! And that mystery, dear listener, is the question: is Glass Onion a worthy follow up to its 2019 predecessor Knives Out? Is there more queer stuff here that warrants a whole episode-length discussion of one of the best new detective film series of the 21st century? How good at Among Us was Stephen Sondheim, actually?  Ok, so there's way more than just one mystery, but your sleuths Eric and Laurence are more than ready to take up the case in this first episode of our 2023 Filmuary series! We chat the yassification of Benoit Blanc, some stellar p...

Brand new year, same fabulous us! Laurence and Eric welcome in 2023 with a fun little check-in ep. to start off an exciting year of queer games culture and more! We give an update on the highly anticipated and long awaited Video Games, Pop Culture, and Beyond Awards, Eric's work-related adventures with some Celebrity Gay Icons of NoteTM, how old Drag Race makes us feel, exciting new releases coming this year,  and the plethora of Star Wars media out right now and whether any of it is good (spoilers: Andor definitely is). Thank you for listening to Gay for Play i...

Another year in the books, another Game of the Year list to make! We, as gay people, love to craft our little lists at the end of every year, so this week we’re having a good ol’ fashioned Game of the Year episode as we each share our individual top 5 favorite games of 2022, alongside a pretty substantial list of our honorable mentions! Which games scored 10s across the board and snatched a coveted spot on our lists? Only time (particularly the next hour and forty-five minutes of this pod) will tell!

Here's to a Happy New Year...

In our last regular episode of the year, we're discussing two huge games from November that we've gotten into over the past month-- Sonic Frontiers and God of War: Ragnarok. One is one of the most narratively compelling games of the year and one is, well, some good honest fun let's just say that!
Eric and Laurence also discuss their Spotify Wrappeds (Spotifies Wrapped?), End of the Year List Season, feelings on the Game Awards (which aired the day after we recorded this episode), and later in the episode discuss some thoughts on Star Wars: Andor, the Don't...

This week, our friend & fellow queer gaming podcaster Travis Ryans (they/he) from the Rainbow Road Podcast,  returns to the show to discuss Pokémon Scarlet & Violet! The 9th Generation of mainline Pokémon games recently released for Nintendo Switch.

Since its launch, the game has gone viral for its myriad technical issues, bugs, and poor performance, but is there still a worthwhile Pokémon RPG to be found beneath all of the mess? Well, as they would say in the Paldea region, "es complicado!"

We dive into all of our thoughts, critiques, letdowns and plea...

It's Halloween time once again, and we are celebrating with an iconically spooky game!

Well, first we're doing our civil duty as gay podcasters & sharing our love for Carly Rae Jepsen's The Loneliest Time, as well as briefly going over all the drama surrounding Bayonetta 3  on the internet this past week, but after that we're talking ALL about THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK-- the infamously dark sequel to Ocarina of Time released for the Nintendo 64 in the year 2000.

For a 22 year old game, Majora's Mask was absurdly ahead of its time, having lots to s...

This week, Eric and Laurence are joined by Brian Moreno (he/him), the president of the Los Angeles Gayming Society, to discuss Blizzard's mega-popular hero shooter OVERWATCH (2)!

Initially released in 2016, Overwatch is a multiplayer competitive shooter featuring a roster over over 40 playable characters with unique abilities and diverse, international backgrounds. The game garnered massive popularity from it's super high-quality animated shorts, went on to become a massive e-sports venture, and garnered headlines for canonically confirming two of its mascot characters (Tracer and Soldier:76) as queer.

Overwatch's servers shut down earlier this month with the release...

The boys are back from a nice little vacay to discuss their recent trips to the famous Disneyland Resort and Disney California Adventure theme parks! We went in the same week but on different days from each other, and we review our experiences, ruminate on whether Disney is in its flop era, talk about childhood joy, Disney adults, Star Wars slaying, Marvel's Flop Avengers Campus, and the overall state of the theme park experience in 2022.

Later in the episode, to keep the Disney train rolling, we discuss DISNEY DREAMLIGHT VALLEY, Disney's foray into the life-sim genre hoping...